Gus Van Horn blog

The often insightful Dick Morris blows it big time in a recent Polyanna-esque column touting the de facto demise of ObamaCare. He ends it as follows: So all that will be left are some very good consumer protection insurance reforms requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and a ban on cancellation or premium hikes in the event of illness. Beyond that, there will be a vestigal administrative superstructure erected to run a massive, national healthcare system in which only 1.5 million people are participating. Like a monument in the desert, it will gather sand and erode over time. Obama's legacy. If only this were all, but no. Even such a result camouflages the very real danger Obama poses to the great legacy of America's founders -- our freedom. Northrup Buechner (who notes that, "ince President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, he has changed it five times") argues this point with startling clarityat Forbes: The most important point is that Mr. Obama does not consider himself bound by the Constitution. He could not have made that more clear. He has drawn a line in the concrete and we cannot ignore it. Those who currently hold political office, and who want to keep our system of government, need to act now. Surely, rejection of the Constitution is grounds for impeachment and charges should be filed. In addition, there are many other actions that Congressmen can and should take--actions that will tell Mr. Obama that we have seen where he is going and we will not let our country go without a fight. Gloating over Barack Obama's apparently losing battle poses the very real threat of losing the war for freedom. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell writes about something I am particularly concerned about as a parent: the war on achievement being fought by the left. Although the following is more of an aside within his column, it struck a chord with me: On top of what Sowell points out in the second paragraph, this astounding and deliberate misuse of language manages to righteously commit injustice on many levels at once (evidence, reasoning, or contradictory goals be damned): (1) to deprive individuals of recognition for their achievements, (2) to assert that individuals exist only as parts of groups to which they are members from birth, (3) to assign personal guilt through association, and (most important) (4) to claim justification for the enslavement of some groups by others. On of the most important things a parent must do is encourage one's child to set and achieve goals. Although I was already aware that I'd have to navigate through our "every kid gets a trophy" culture, I have noticed that it is possible (and common) to heap inappropriate praise on children. (This is even on top of accounting for what even very young ones can realistically accomplish.) It is almost impossible, for example, to look at modern children's programming that does not treat individual effort as if it doesn't exist or divorce effort from reward. So I guess that if I help her see though this nonsense or she does so herself, we can look forward to the same battle again, from a slightly different angle, later on. The progression seems to be: empty praise, hooray for the group, pillage groups that have more than your own. Forewarned is forearmed. On a much more positive note, the rest of the Sowell piece brings up an inspirational story you probably haven't heard of yet. Do read the whole thing. -- CAV Link to Original

I have often described Barack Obama's political philosophy as pragmatism (i.e., range-of-the-moment and employing cultural defaults as criteria for "what 'works'"). The President is hardly unique in possessing that flaw, but Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal indirectly brings up the following interesting question: Can some pragmatists be "better" than others? That or he caused me to think of it when he examined the intellectual shoals from which Obama draws his oratory: Maybe Mr. Obama has similar literary tastes [to Lincoln (e.g., Shakespeare) --ed]. It doesn't show. "An economy built to last," the refrain from his 2012 State of the Union, borrows from an ad slogan once used to sell the Ford Edsel. "Nation-building at home," another favorite presidential trope, was born in a Tom Friedman column. "We are the ones we have been waiting for" is the title of a volume of essays by Alice Walker. "The audacity of hope" is adapted from a Jeremiah Wright sermon. "Yes We Can!" is the anthem from "Bob the Builder," a TV cartoon aimed at 3-year-olds. There is a common view that good policy and good rhetoric have little intrinsic connection. Not so. President Obama's stupendously shallow rhetoric betrays a remarkably superficial mind. Superficial minds designed ObamaCare. Superficial minds are now astounded by its elementary failures, and will continue to be astounded by the failures to come. [link in original] I am not familiar enough with Stephens to know whether he is jumping onto the conservative bandwagon that Obama is failing merely (or primarily) because he is incompetent, but he makes a good point here, and this presents us with the opportunity to consider what a more competent President might have wrought. Perhaps a less obviously atrocious program might have spared Democrats the embarrassment they are now facing -- and the President is desperately trying to forestall with his delays and "fixes". (Perhaps someone better briefed on how the insurance industry works might have slowly phased out "bad" policies, for example.) But would such a program even then have delivered on its promise, or -- and more conservatives could stand to ask the question -- would it have less trampled the liberty Obama has sworn to protect? It is fine to point out how unsophisticated Obama is, but this is something that will buy us time at best. Advocates of freedom still have work to do. Obama may have set the table, but the main courses, of challenging the propriety of government meddling and theft, won't serve themselves. That the failures are coming faster and more obviously doesn't mean that everyone knows why they had to come. To focus too much on Obama's competence risks distracting from that fact and from the stern and long overdue moral appraisal due to the welfare state. Obama really screwed up his takeover of the medical sector. Be glad of that, but don't expect the government to back out on its own. -- CAV Link to Original

As I noted Saturday, the lawlessness of the president's ObamaCare "fix" really bothers me. I am glad to see, based on this Instapunditpost and this Mark Steyn column, that I am hardly alone. From the latter, it would appear that even Howard Dean has a problem with the move: "I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this," mused former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. But he's obviously some kind of right-wing wacko. Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to "pass" a "law" allowing people to keep their health plans. The same president who had unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep their health plans indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that effect: It only counts if he does it - geddit? As his court eunuchs at the Associated Press obligingly put it: "Obama Will Allow Old Plans." It's Barry's world; we just live in it. Barack Obama is handing the Republicans a golden opportunity, but what will they do with it? If, as Michael Hurd recently noted, they turn to someone like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, they will blow it, win or lose: Republicans are unwilling to defend the right of the individual against the state in unequivocal terms. If you doubt me, consider the words of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution." And actions flow from political philosophy, as Hurd makes clear much later: Chris Christie ... will claim that government should be smaller and leaner. He will make this claim in the name of selfless self-sacrifice. Because his underlying premise is self-sacrifice, government welfare and entitlements will continue to grow, just as they have under all Republican presidents before him. Call Obama incompetent or dictatorial or both, I don't care: the best bet to make damned sure we are stuck with ObamaCare permanently will be this: Some "adult" like Christie enters office and, wrongly conceding ObamaCare to be a good idea, but badly executed, "fixes" it. We don't just need the Democrats to start losing elections: We need the victors to quit recycling their policies, and repeal them instead. -- CAV Link to Original

What Does He Mean by "Execute", Anyway? Political blogger Ed Rogers makes short work of a proposed "fix" for those ObamaCare victims who discovered, upon "seeing what's inside", that they couldn't keep their plans: A cursory discussion with almost anyone who knows anything about the insurance business would have alerted the president to the fact that his proposal is unworkable. The initial take from expertson both the right and the left is that the president did not fix anything yesterday. Insurance industry experts agree that the very idea that canceled health policies can be renewed or extended for one year is laughable -- especially with the cumbersome rules that would have to accompany any such temporary reinstatements or extensions. One must assume the White House consulted experts before President Obama announced his plan. So we can rule out delusion. Surely this was an informed decision … right? [link in original] Rogers even goes on to speculate that ObamaCare could be repealed on a bipartisan vote should Democrats conclude that "blaming Republicans for depriving 48+ million Americans of health care is better than having 114+ million American households furious at your meddling with their health insurance" [links in original]. That would be a welcome windfall, so long as "and replace" doesn't happen. But here's something that really bothers me, whether Obama is delusional and incompetent or more calculating than he seems: Here he is, again, meddling with contracts between consenting adults (but switching sides out of expedience), as if he is above the law and, indeed, above reality. It is bad enough that this law promises to further entrench the entitlement state and the parasitic mindset that goes with it. But Obama's activities as Chief Executive -- the very man sworn to uphold the law -- have been a veritable showcase of how best to undermine the law and turn us into a nation of men, and not laws. Weekend Reading "The political equivalent of the arsenic-cyanide spectrum is the fascism-communism spectrum." -- Harry Binswanger , in "Statism: Whether Fascist or Communist, It's the Deadly Opposite of Capitalism" at Forbes "... Christmas shopping in a busy store can be festive and fun, but why deliberately seek out the hysteria and traffic jams?" -- Michael Hurd, in "Black Friday: Mob Psychology?" at The Delaware Wave "f anything gets to me, it's when a client pays me good money for advice, and then doesn't take it - returning again and again with the same problem." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Psychological Equivalent of Prison" at The Delaware Coast Press "Since almost anybody can be included in the 'stakeholder' classification , the true function of this fuzzy term is to nullify the concept of a stockholder, who becomes just another 'stakeholder,' with no distinctive rights" -- Peter Schwartz, in "Why Is the Tea Party 'Extremist,' but Democratic Support for Big Government 'Moderate'?" at Forbes "It's easy to see the lives saved by products that exist. But it's almost impossible to know which lives would have been saved by innovations that never made it to market." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Will Tomorrow's Medical Innovations Be There When You Need Them?" at PJ Media My Two Cents I will keep the following sentence from the Peter Schwartz piece in mind the next time someone brings up the Tea Party or the government "shutdown": When House Republicans last month were willing to shut down the government unless ObamaCare was defunded, they were called "extremists" and likened to terrorists; when Democrats were willing to shut down the government unless ObamaCare was funded, they were called "moderates." Such was the media snow job about the so-called shutdown that I have to admit that it never occurred to me, as obvious as it now seems, to put what the Democrats did that way. i am grateful to Schwartz for laying this out, even if he might have felt like he was rehashing the obvious when he wrote it. An Open Letter to My Toddler Regarding His Use of My iPhone Lauren Appel lays down the law: Other Mommies seem convinced that posting an epistle is an effective way to communicate with their small children, so I felt it was worth a shot. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize I'm probably better off attaching my words here as a PDFand emailing it to your father. You can pick up the message the next time you are using his phone. I sometimes blog here about some of the special moments fatherhood has afforded me, which are really just the tip of the iceberg of a whole transformative and positive experience. So, too, is the rich, new vein of humor I have enjoyed over the past couple of years. --CAV Link to Original

1. Thanks to a clever insight and lots of hard work, a parlor trick will soon ease many otherwise difficult baby deliveries. An Argentine auto mechanic who saw an Internet video of a cork being removed from a bottle with an inflated plastic bag woke up one night with a brilliant idea: [T]he same parlor trick could save a baby stuck in the birth canal. Mr. Odón, 59, an Argentine car mechanic, built his first prototype in his kitchen, using a glass jar for a womb, his daughter's doll for the trapped baby, and a fabric bag and sleeve sewn by his wife as his lifesaving device. There is another round of safety testing in the works, but the World Health Organization has endorsed the device, which Becton Dickinson will manufacture. Physicians see the inexpensive device reducing the number of Caesarian births in wealthy countries and saving babies outright in poorer ones. 2. With antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the rise, it is good to hear that a researcher has made a significant advance applicable to the problem. ... Kim Lewis from Northeastern University has now found an exciting way of killing persisters [bacteria that elude antibiotic activity by remaining dormant --ed], with an antibiotic called ADEP4 that forces these cells to eat themselves in their sleep. He hasn't tested it in humans yet, but it can completely clear severe and long-lasting infections in mice. It even kills persisters that are also resistant to traditional antibiotics, such as MRSA. "It's a very important milestone," says Lewis. [bold added] The method, which pairs the antibiotic with another drug, also kills biofilms. 3. Our son, now five months old, has been returning smiles for some time now, and has started laughing. One evening, as I was preparing dinner in the kitchen, Mrs. Van Horn was holding him while our daughter played on a pile of rubber mats we had there for cleaning. The boy paid rapt attention to his older sister's antics, and would frequently laugh at them. Pumpkin eventually reciprocated his fandom with a hug. The new conventional wisdom holds that such moments are made for videocams, but I am not so sure. Kids know when their parents are distracted, and my daughter, at least, doesn't care to be posed or choreographed. I am glad that we simply let events unfold and enjoyed that precious, unique moment for what it was. The hug was the best part, but hindsight suggests that we might have prevented that moment in trying to "save the moment". 4. This week, I could have easily made this entire list by thinking about my kids, but I'll stop at two items. Yesterday, my daughter said, "I need a haircut", and we ended up playing "barber". She had said that a few other times before, always out of the blue, but I had always taken her literally. I'd either tell her she was right, and that she would have one soon, or that she'd just had one. A couple of times, after such replies, she'd say, "I don't need a haircut." How did I figure what she meant this time? Because she supplied me context: We were in her playroom when she proceeded to give me a "haircut", using a thin book as the scissors. Then, when she was done, she said she needed a haircut. (My guess is that this is a game she has picked up at the daycare she attends three days a week.) I was also impressed in other ways with how imaginative she can be. We used a rattle as a "shampoo" bottle once, but when this was missing later, she suggested her milk bottle before I came up with anything. Her hair tangles very easily, but she apparently doesn't realize that bristle brushes don't get caught the way stiff wire brushes do. So when I saw a bristle brush nearby and suggested we use it, she looked horrified -- and immediately suggested a long Duplo block instead. Oh, I'll sneak another one in today: Pumpkin told me or the first time this week that she has a friend. I met her the next time I dropped my daughter off to "school". Little "Mia" came straight over and greeted her. -- CAV Link to Original

A white supremacist scheming to take over a hamlet in North Dakota got a nice reality check on national television in the form of a DNA test result: Craig Cobb, 61, who has tried to create a white enclave in tiny Leith, N.D., submitted a DNA sample to Trisha Goddard's talk show and got the results back during a recent taping. The UK's Daily Mail newspaper got a copy of the segment of the show, which is nationally syndicated by NBC, and posted video of the moment Goddard read out the results to Cobb in front of a studio audience. "Eighty-six percent European and," Goddard said, pausing as the audience started to cheer before she continued, "14 percent sub-Saharan African!" Let's pause for a moment to consider the deterministicpremise behind racism, which Ayn Rand once spelled out so well: Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage--the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Ayn Rand, who held that men have free will, vehemently disagreed with this notion, of course. Amusingly, but not surprisingly for someone with so much invested in the idea that virtue is genetically determined, Cobb is in deep denial. Dismissing the aforementioned results as "noise", he has vowed to avail himself of "real science" -- to have himself tested three more times and publish the results. I'm almost certain that we'll soon be hearing about a conspiracy among scientists -- who everyone knows are all Communists (and in cahoots with Barack Obama) anyway -- to discredit Cobb by libeling him with cooked-up results. Of course, I could be as wrong about Cobb as he is about people of black ancestry. Maybe he will own up to being mixed race like so many other Americans are. And maybe he will reconsider how he judges character. But my evidence about him is more limited and points in quite the opposite direction than that I have about the members in general of any particular racial group: I won't be holding my breath. -- CAV Link to Original

An entrepreneur in Kansas City is raising funds to start selling what he calls "heirloom chemistry sets". I believe he refers at once to the craftsmanship of the chest, the actual glassware, and the chemicals. Our culture is rife with precautionary thinking and the government meddling that comes with it. These make it difficult to obtain "real" chemistry sets for children, so I am happy to see someone wants to do this, despite today's hostile cultural and legal climates: To tell our story for this Kickstarter project, we really have to start in Christmas of 1959. Like many young scientists of the time, I received a Gilbert Chemistry set. This chemistry set provided me hours of great fun and learning as well as laying the foundation for my future as a research chemist. As I became an adult I wanted to share these types of experiences with my daughter, my nephews and nieces, and friends. But soon I became aware real chemistry sets were no longer available. Without real chemistry sets and opportunities for students to learn and explore, where would our future chemists come from? So .... I set out on a mission. Nine years ago, my wife and I acted on that mission and opened our science store, H.M.S. Beagle[.] This reminds me of a remark I made recently in defense of the possibility of conducting experiments using the soon-to-be released hardware/software package, "Roboroach": How are "amateurs" to become professionals (or at least come to realize they might want to become professionals)? Returning to the kickstarter page: Important notes about the equipment and chemicals offered in this project: The selection of chemicals in this set matches those originally offered by the A.C. Gilbert company from the 1920s through the 40s. We understand the hesitancy of some parents to allow their children to have access to certain chemicals and while every chemical we offer is safe when handled properly we will offer those who have pledged at those levels, where appropriate, to request substitutes for any given chemical or chemicals. We stand ready to make suggestions for proper substitutes which will allow the experimenter to make use of the supplied manuals, experiments and demonstrations. Each chemical has a QR code on its label that links directly to its particular Safety Data Sheet on our web site ( http://www.hms-beagle.com/beagle_msds.html). We are committed to safety and stand ready to provide advice when asked. [emphasis and link in original] Just after the above quote, I also learned that, "some states do frown on its [sic] citizens owning chemical glassware." Wow. Even I didn't realize things had gotten this bad, although it makes sense in retrospect. Thanks, "War on Drugs". (Or should I thank the "War" on terrorism for this one?) We have, in the span of about a century, devolved from a society in which pre-teen boys were frequently trusted with guns and dangerous chemicals -- each of which were readily available -- to one in which adults often (usually?) have difficulty obtaining either. I wish this entrepreneur luck. He will need it. May his sets, rather than being the last of the real chemistry sets, be among the first of their return. -- CAV Link to Original

Dick Morris praises the French, of all nations, for standing up to Iran and managing, in the process, to slow down the manufacture of its first nuclear weapon. Oh, and its economy would have gotten an infusion of cash equivalent to about four percent of its GDP. There is much grave news in the Morris piece, in the vein of specifics regarding how close Iran is to building the bomb, and how happy the Obama Administration apparently is to help them get there. However, the most alarming news is the column itself, which exemplifies the moral cowardice of the West. Does Morris think that negotiating with terrorists will actually accomplish anything -- or does he regard them having nuclear weapons later rather than sooner as inevitable or, somehow, at least a good thing? (We can hope his whole piece was ironic, I suppose.) There was a time when the obvious solution to this non-dilemma would have been implemented without one trace of guilt: the speedy air delivery of as many expertly-assembled nuclear weapons to Iran as necessary to prevent it from getting its filthy hands on a single unexploded bomb of its own at all. You want nukes? Have them. By coincidence, I happened to listen to a short, but very relevant podcast yesterday, in which Yaron Brook of ARI explains the actual motives of the jihadist atrocities of September 11, 2001. If you have the time, I recommend reading the Morris piece, and then listening to the podcast. You will see that Brook is spot-on: the stench of moral cowardice coming from the West is so strong that even unwashed barbarians like the jihadists can smell it. -- CAV Link to Original

Jeff Jacoby, asking whether our First Amendment protections "stop at 35 feet", writes about a Massachusetts law that the Supreme Court is about to review: Early next year, the Supreme Court will take up McCullen v. Coakley, a case challenging the Massachusetts statute that requires anti-abortion protesters and "sidewalk counselors" to stay at least 35 feet away from abortion-clinic entrances. Signed by Governor Deval Patrick in 2007, it is the strictest such "buffer zone" law in the nation; violators can be punished with up to 30 months in prison and fines as high as $5,000. [links in original] Jacoby goes on to assert that the case "isn't about abortion. It's about freedom of speech." I agree with Jacoby that the law fals to protect freedom of speech, that the law is wrong to treat individuals differently on the basis of their opinions, and that it is wrong, as he puts it, to extend "abortion clinics' proprietary rights over everything within a 35-foot radius". However, I think that laws like this are just the tip of the iceberg regarding what is wrong with our government today. That last quote continues: "including public sidewalks and streets." Therein lies a problem much bigger the law itself. To step back for a moment, the law is clearly intended to solve a real problem: people are being made to feel unsafe going into clinics either to work or to undergo medical procedures. Yes, assault and battery are already illegal, but they do appear to "come with the territory" more with some kinds of protests than others. To a private property owner, it might make perfect sense to forbid protests in general or even just specific kinds of protests, in order to avoid the prospect. (And let me add here that no private property owner owes anyone else a platform to exercise his right to freedom of speech.) This law is borne of that kind of thinking, but in the improper circumstance of the government owning things like streets and sidewalks, which should be privately owned (Search "qwe" on that page.). That circumstance unfortunately puts the government in the position of either infringing on the right to free speech or allowing all kinds of "protests" whose participants frequently endanger life and limb, when it makes decisions, such as whether to allow protests. That is, by improperly owning property, the government ultimately will infringes on the rights of individuals in ways we may or may not be able to foresee. That said, I agree with Jacoby that, so long as the government owns such property (i.e., until it is truly privatized), it has no business imposing such "buffer zones", as reasonable as such measures might be on the part of private property owners. The law should be overturned. That's the court's job. But so must our modern tolerance for a state that owns practically everything, and could not avoid (even if its officials wanted to) trampling our rights. That is a job too big for the court. That job requires cultural change spanning decades and many election cycles. Jeff Jacoby is right to oppose this law, but he has barely scratched the surface of what is wrong with it and its larger context. Even a correct decision by the Supreme Court will leave us in a bad situation. -- CAV Link to Original

Cruising to Work I am always interested in learning about offbeat places to work, and this blog posting on the advantages of working during cruises did not disappoint. The number one enemy of productivity is distraction, either in the form of entertainment or things like chores and phone calls which feel productive but break up the day. Cruise ships are a remarkable way to eliminate all of those things. Efficiency can be so high on a cruise ship that I schedule things like entire rewrites of major sections of Sett or the writing of a brand new book for the two-week cruise. Having a wife and two young kids, I am unlikely to avail myself of this option any time in the near future, but it's definitely filed away. For anyone who might be able to use the idea now, the author has supplied a link to a tool that can help find very cheap cruises. Weekend Reading "At least when the Mafia shakes down local shopkeepers, they don't try to pretend that it's for the victims' own good." -- Paul Hsieh, in "ObamaCare and the Wages of Spin" at PJ Media "Anyone looking for inspiration from a turnaround situation -– whether in business, career, or sport –- can find plenty of it in the amazing story of the 2013 Boston Red Sox." -- Richard Salsman, in "How Those Amazing Red Sox Did It Once Again" at Forbes "On the other hand, I have observed that parents who believe that raising a child is not automatic -- that one must decide upon principles and strategies to guide them -- derive more satisfaction from being a parent." -- Michael Hurd, in "Are You Really Happy?" at The Delaware Wave "[T]he fact that so many humans disappoint gives pets a potential edge they wouldn't otherwise have." -- Michael Hurd, in "For the Love of Pets" at The Delaware Coast Press "Hatred for the achievers is the outward projection of their own self-loathing." -- Harry Binswanger, in "When It Comes to Hate, the Left Beats the Right, Hands Down " at Forbes "The bottom line is that Atlas Shrugged isn't an economics text or a business how-to manual, it's a brilliant novel of ideas that challenges conventional thinking on every major issue in life -- not just money, but work, family, politics, and even sex." -- Steve Simpson, in "Atlas ShruggedIs a Book About Pride in One's Work, and the Success That Results" at Forbes In Further Detail The Hsieh article linked above provides quite the litany of bugs (i.e., broken promises) regarding ObamaCare that are now being touted as features. Compassion for Cockroaches "Roboroach", a phone app and a small electronic circuit that can be attached to a cockroach and used to control its movements, is causing quite the uproar: Animal behaviour scientist Jonathan Balcombe has been quoted on US scientific websites as saying that the insects are harmed in the process. "If it was discovered that a teacher was having students use magnifying glasses to burn ants and then look at their tissue, how would people react?" he is quoted as saying. Likewise Queen's University philosophy Professor Michael Allen warned that the device will "encourage amateurs to operate invasively on living organisms" and "encourage thinking of complex living organisms as mere machines or tools". Regarding the first of Allen's points: How are "amateurs" to become professionals (or at least come to realize they might want to become professionals)? Regarding the second, read on. While I don't condone being cruel to animals for the hell of it, I oppose the notion that they have rights, specifically that harming them for the sake of learning or advancing scientific knowledge is wrong. As for whether using the device can stunt empathy, isn't that where parents and educators should be stepping in? This tool controls the motions of a cockroach, not the mind of its user. --CAV Link to Original

1. My wife was headed out of town and needed her Windows netbook, which suddenly and semi-mysteriously had become unable to join networks. Unfamiliar with Windows and having only a few hours to work with -- but having a hunch about the source of the problem -- I googled around and found two pertinent-looking solutions at the Microsoft support site. One, by a Microsoft employee, looked quite thorough, but time-consuming. One person reported finding it helpful. The other, by one "sheeko1", looked a little dubious (but not outside the realm of possibility for an obscure and dumbed-down OS). Thirty-one people found this one helpful. It would take less than five minutes to try and, if it didn't work, I knew exactly what to undo. It worked! My hat goes off to Microsoft for hosting a good support site and to sheeko1 for saving me a couple of hours and some stress -- and my wife from having to lug around a full-sized laptop. 2. There is nothing like having a toddler to reawaken one's appreciation for the night sky. At dusk a few days ago, as I was taking my little girl out of her car seat, she suddenly pointed at the sky across the street, and asked, "What is it?" No stars were visible, but with some effort, I was able to find a planet just over a rooftop and behind some tree branches. I moved so we could both see this better. "That?" "Yes." I told her it was a planet, maybe Jupiter (which we saw lots of last year), but I wasn't sure which. We went inside, and she proudly told her visiting grandmother that she had spotted a planet, even repeating that it may be Jupiter. (That's the tidy version. What really stands out in my mind is how much of my short litany she remembered and restated.) I quickly checked my sky map phone app -- What parent would be without one? -- and told her that I was able to find out that it was Venus. She asked me to take her outside to see it again, which we did. I enjoyed telling her that the world we live on is a planet, and that Venus and Jupiter are also planets, but that they look like stars because they are so far away. 3. At least some scientists now believe that, as the title of this Smithsonian article puts it, "Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms". 4. Why I follow Arsenal: It has been almost a fortnight since I saw this mind-bending goalunfold, and I still can't get over it. -- CAV Link to Original

I didn't follow the elections this year, but I am hardly surprised that pundits are drawing two completely different wrong conclusions from yesterday's results. The highest profile results were (1) the landslide reelection of New Jersey's Republican governor, Chris Christie; (2) the squeaker win of Democrat Terry McAuliffe as governor of Virginia; and (3) the loss of New York City's Republican mayoral candidate. Errol Louis, although correct that there is a "civil war" going on in the Republican Party, sums up both wrong lessons in his post-mortem: The Republican civil war, decades in the making, will come to a head in the next 36 months, as we begin the run-up to the next presidential election. Expect Christie and other moderate candidates to point to Virginia, New York and other losses as missed opportunities -- the price for choosing to win arguments instead of elections. And expect the tea party to respond that pursuing politics without principles is no way to lead a country. The choice for the GOP isn't either sticking to principles or governing. There is plainly enough discontent with the leviathan state Presidents Bush and Obama have left us with that a message of individual economic freedom can gain traction and win elections. Unfortunately, too many Republicans embrace principles that are at odds with this message. So what if we lower taxes or make parts of our economy freer if the government simply turns towards intruding more elsewhere, such as by preventing some consenting adults from enjoying the same legal protections as everyone else in committed relationships? There is a contradiction between arguing for economic freedom one moment -- and against sexual freedom the next. Democrats sense this on a level and happily associate the medieval religionists faction of the Republican Party with the "libertarian" wing whenever they get the chance, and scare voters into supporting them. The problem with the GOP is not that it is a coalition between sell-outs who win and dogmatists who lose (as if principles have no objective basis or practical value), but that it includes both factions that value personal freedom and factions that actually oppose it. So long as the GOP message ends up being merely, "We'll control a different aspect of your lives", the electorate will see no real alternative and go with the devil it already knows. This last fact explains why selling out, and running on "competence" or "maturity" as Christie seems to have done might seem like a good strategy. But this will lead to freedom dying out in the long run, and is completely unnecessary, as our principled founders demonstrated over two centuries ago. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing for the We Are Mammoth website, Jason James considers the idea of working long hours in terms of what it means about an employer and what it can mean to an individual. He concludes his insightful analysis with the following advice: f you are going to put in the extra hours, make sure it's on your own terms. And if some place or some job is making you feel like long hours "come with the territory" just know they are misleading you to their benefit, and you can find a better situation with some extra effort. I was particularly impressed with the author's emphasis on two often-overlooked aspects of this practice: the fact that the employer-employee relationship is supposed to be a mutually-beneficial trade, and that work is supposed to be a life-promoting value. James doesn't use the term, but his analysis demonstrates the abject poverty of moral intrinsicism -- in this case the common notion that long hours equal productivity or virtue. He demonstrates that this is very often not the case at all. -- CAV Link to Original

accuse opponents of sounding like a broken record while remaining oblivious to their own unimaginative monotony. -- CAV Link to Original

The Pandora's box that Nancy Pelosi famously urged us to openhas no shortage of nasty surprises. For example, one of the more ludicrous consequences of the "Affordable" "Care" Act, according to Edie Sundby, is the following: Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines [That was bad enough. -- ed]; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines. Sadly for Sundby, who is fighting cancer, and potentially anyone else, this stupid law has deadly consequences. In her case, this has meant the loss of her insurance policy and, with that, access to the medical team that had been treating her so successfully: My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits. One can only hope her final paragraph moves some official or pull-peddler to save her life, but it should also serve as a warning to everyone else: For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point. There are no "winners" in a set-up like this -- not when what should be a straightforward personal decision becomes a scamper through a man-made maze, punctuated by pleas for release. Such a system cannot be reformed. It must be repealed. -- CAV Link to Original

"Invisible"? To Whom? There is a thought-provoking article on "invisible work" in The Atlantic. Among other things, it considers how (and why) investors and government regulators might want to measure the economic impact of web-based businesses, such as Airbnb. As you might expect, the entitlement state both wants a piece of the action and, ill-informed by ancient stereotypes about capitalism, seeks to control it: Do follow the first link in the excerpt to see why a company founded on enabling consenting adults to do business with each other is having to explain that it is a "good neighbor", and to whom. It is about equal parts amusing and pathetic that every new technological advance that frees up time from less productive activity is viewed as a "threat" by a meddlesome third party. Weekend Reading "[T]rying to compromise when none is possible is futile." -- Michael Hurd, in "Appeasement Isn't Smart" at The Delaware Coast Press "Rand's great insight was that every element of this anti-capitalist framework came from the same error: ignoring and denying the mind." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "Ayn Rand Rewrote the Story of Capitalism to Show That It Is a Necessary Good" at USApp My Two Cents The Brook and Watkins piece underscores a crucial aspect of cultural activism by specifically addressing weak defenses of capitalism: Even many people whose hearts are in the right place have work to do if they are to be able to help turn the tide in favor of freedom. Should We Call It "Cultural Illiteracy"? The following passage, from a column about soccer, reminds me of occasional encounters I have had on many other subjects: One must tailor his message to an audience, yes. This does entail some setting of context, some clarity about one's premises, and a degree of patience in making one's evidence and logic clear, But at a certain point, one has to stop. Some people, through lack of intellect, poor thinking habits, or outright evasion, can not or will not see even the best-put, most straightforward points. Never let such "readers" -- and our culture has made them as common as flies -- wear you down to the point that you feel like you have to write what Ayn Rand aptly called "the Unanswerable Article" [my caps]. They are beyond help: Ignore them, and address a truly rational audience instead. --CAV Link to Original

1. It's hard to believe we've been in St. Louis for just over a year, but this was our second Halloween here. Mrs. Van Horn took our daughter out to trick-or-treat while my four-month-old son and I manned the door at home. I like the local custom of having the kids earn their candy by telling a joke: We had our daughter, who is just over two, ask, "What is a cat's favorite color?" (The answer is "purrr-ple".) 2. Currently, my daughter's favorite game is to "go hiding", which means she gets under a blanket while I pretend to have no idea where she is. She then picks a moment, often well before I'm done wondering out loud where she might be, to pop her head out and giggle, "Here I am!" 3. Once, back in our Boston days, I was waiting with my daughter on a subway platform. A lady approached to admire the baby and eventually got around to asking about her name. After I answered, she grinned and said, "Wow! I can spell it and pronounce it!" I have a feeling she might have enjoyed this piece on bad names, which reader Snedcat pointed out to me. Snedcat notes that the piece presents a "convincing argument that the hippies might not have been ... worse than the Victorians, and possibly not as bad as the Puritans," when it comes to naming children. 4. According to Dan Goodin, the IT Security Editor of Ars Technica, reports of "badBIOS" are "the advanced persistent threat equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting". Explicitly denying that his article is a Halloween hoax, Goodin describes an airgap-jumping, OS-agnostic, self-repairing virus that sounds more like science fiction than fact: I regard myself as more of a hack than a hacker with respect to computers, but the various individual observations reported in the piece all sound plausible to me. -- CAV Link to Original

Correctly callingentitlement spending "legalized theft", Walter Williams wonders whether there is a "way out" for a declining America, the vast majority of whose public is dissatisfied with her direction. Williams notes the enormity and recent growth in entitlement spending: Just by projections -- as if we can't ramp up our profligacy even more before then -- Big Trouble is just around the corner. Williams identifies the origin of this mess in the moral attitudes and repect for law of the American public at large. He concludes: Although I share Williams' pessimism, the silver lining to his piece lies in the question he raised in its title, which I will note is rhetorical. -- CAV Link to Original

John Stossel bluntly calls for an end to the Federal Reserve: The Fed, created to shore up capitalism, has become an instrument of government economic management not so different from a socialist planning board: a tiny handful of powerful people attempt to fine-tune the entire economy. Its main mission has become continually goosing economic activity through infusions of new cash to maintain the illusion that good times will never falter. The result isn't stability, but one economic bubble after another. Along the way, he hurls the following timely barb: Alan Greenspan said he tried to be obscure because he didn't want to spook markets. He called his obfuscation "Fedspeak." It's a far cry from the clarity of his language -- and principles -- when he was young and a disciple of libertarian Ayn Rand. (I'll overlook the common, but inaccurate description of Rand's political views.) Stossel also notes something most of his readers will not know: that Canada, lacking a central bank, did not suffer bank failures during the 1930s. The nomination of Janet Yellen to the charimanship of the Fed practically makes this piece required reading -- and it provides an excellent reason to pass word of it along to others. -- CAV Link to Original

Best-selling author Ryan Holiday, who calls wanting to be a writer "mistake #1", nevertheless offers some very good advice on ... how to become a writer. Holiday clearly doesn't mean that nobody should want to be a writer, but he plainly wants to counter what he sees as a flood of bad advice on writing. I don't agree with everything he says -- for example, he sounds like he undervalues the formal study of writing -- but he draws attention to something more writers could stand to hear: the relationship between good writing and motivation. Holliday rightly rejects a tendency among writers of an academic bent to focus too much on writing as a craft, and not enough on experiencing life: Write all the time, they'll tell you. Write for your college newspaper. Get an MFA. Go to writer's groups. Send query letters to agents. What do they never say? Go do interesting things. Holliday goes on to show us why this is important: What matters more now than any other single thing is that what you're saying is different-that it's interesting, that it provokes some response from people. You'll only accomplish this if you've got something you have to say. Better yet, you need to have something that you can't NOT say. If what you're writing is a compulsion rather than a vehicle for your display how smart and well practiced you are. So think about it one more time. Is it that you want to be a writer? Or it's that you have these things inside you that you want very badly to communicate to people and writing is the best way to do it? Getting the answer to that question right is the day you really become a writer How can one know what one must talk about without experience? How can one relate what he learns about to others without developing some sense of how to relate to others? How can a reader become interested in prim, well-crafted verbiage that never really goes anywhere? That's all "writing" is when it is not a vessel for passion. Those are vital considerations for anyone afflicted with the desire to write. -- CAV Link to Original

It isn't just those who are ignorant of history who are doomed to repeat it. Those who ignore it or misinterpret it badly enough can, too. The New York Times reports that inflation is once again all the rage among central planners. Notice that current crop of officials appear to be combining the aforementioned biases by cherry-picking: Lately, however, the 1970s have seemed a less relevant cautionary tale than the fate of Japan, where prices have been in general decline since the late 1990s. Kariya, a popular instant dinner of curry in a pouch that cost 120 yen in 2000, can now be found for 68 yen, according to the blog Yen for Living. This enduring deflation, which policy makers are now trying to end, kept the economy in retreat as people hesitated to make purchases, because prices were falling, or to borrow money, because the cost of repayment was rising. [links in original] Fortunately, for anyone interested in helping voters get up to speed on the truth, we have Ayn Rand and Thomas Sowell. Ayn Rand did a nice job of making inflation intelligible to an ordinary person decades ago through a thought experiment, which I quote here in part: [P]roject what would happen to your community of a hundred hard-working, prosperous, forward-moving people, if one man were allowed to trade on your market, not by means of gold, but by means of paper--i.e., if he paid you, not with a material commodity, not with goods he had actually produced, but merely with a promissory note on his future production. This man takes your goods, but does not use them to support his own production; he does not produce at all--he merely consumes the goods. Then, he pays you higher prices for more goods--again in promissory notes--assuring you that he is your best customer, who expands your market. Then, one day, a struggling young farmer, who suffered from a bad flood, wants to buy some grain from you, but your price has risen and you haven't much grain to spare, so he goes bankrupt. Then, the dairy farmer, to whom he owed money, raises the price of milk to make up for the loss--and the truck farmer, who needs the milk, gives up buying the eggs he had always bought--and the poultry farmer kills some of his chickens, which he can't afford to feed--and the alfalfa grower, who can't afford the higher price of eggs, sells some of his stock seed and cuts down on his planting--and the dairy farmer can't afford the higher price of alfalfa, so he cancels his order to the blacksmith--and you want to buy the new plow you had been saving for, but the blacksmith has gone bankrupt. Then all of you present the promissory notes to your "best customer," and you discover that they were promissory notes not on his future production, but on yours--only you have nothing left to produce with. Your land is there, your structures are there, but there is no food to sustain you through the coming winter, and no stock seed to plant. ["Egalitarianism and Inflation", in The Ayn Rand Letter, no. III, vol. 19, pp. 338-339] But the above is almost made to look superflous in the face of historical evidence analyzed with the goal of understanding what can cause a nation to prosper (vice what can make printing money look like a good idea), as Thomas Sowell demonstrates: [Federal Reserve Chairman nominee Janet Yellen's] first question, whether free market economies can achieve full employment without government intervention, is a purely factual question that can be answered from history. For the first 150 years of the United States, there was no policy of federal intervention when the economy turned down. And, much later: Under Calvin Coolidge, the ultimate in non-interventionist government, the annual unemployment rate got down to 1.8 percent. How does the track record of Keynesian intervention compare to that? Earlier, Sowell reminds us of a term we might soon need to take from the shelf and dust off: "stagflation". (Astoundingly, even the Times brings it up -- before trying to help us forget it.) So long as Obama is in power and voters don't mind this kind of thinking too much, we are at the very least in danger of this problem recurring. Fortunately, we can work to show that he and his big government cronies are wrong by spreading the word. -- CAV Link to Original

Between You and Your Doctor Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz discusses (via HBL) the regulatory and bureaucratic maze of ObamaCare, correctly noting that, "The officials who planned ObamaCare blame their Web engineers, but they're passing the buck." His column is well worth a read. However, if you're pressed for time you could also just take a gander at the schematic posted on the Senate's web site... ... and remember it the next time you see or hear this monstrosity referred to as a "marketplace". Weekend Reading "[P]erfectionism and the quest for excellence are not the same thing." -- Michael Hurd, in "You Can't Be Too Perfect..." at The Delaware Coast Press "Even in the midst of something heartbreaking and disastrous, we can use the strength of our minds and our free will to rebuild our lives around the disaster and possibly even come out stronger than before." -- Michael Hurd, in "It Really Is How You Look at It!" at The Delaware Wave "Note that none of these promotions were mandated by the government (nor should they be)." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Northwestern University Did Right in Offering a Peanut-Free Football Game" at Forbes My Two Cents The Hsieh piece notes a common knee-jerk reaction against the Northwestern event among conservative commentators (i.e., equating the game to yet more political correctness run amok). It was good to see Hsieh step in and do what they failed to do: Note the difference between (a) a business concern -- which Northwestern practically is, in this context -- electing to hold an event like this and ( the government forcing it to hold such events. This was a lost opportunity on those conservatives' part to support the right way to deal with an uncommon health problem, not to mention a revelation regarding their intellectual sloppiness. So what if leftist multiculturalists glom on to every problem anyone might have? That doesn't mean that someone choosing to address a problem afflicted by such attention is necessarily a multiculturalist or a useful idiot. Computer Nostalgia Wired ran a story about a collector of computer viruses who posts screenshots and videos of the malware in action. Some of the early stuff -- the article focuses on DOS viruses -- reminds me of some of the more artistic grafitti I have seen over the years. Unsurprisingly, so do the attitudes of its authors resemble those of the vandals who regard themselves as artists: For at least some of these mischievous coders, the virus truly did serve as a creative medium. When asked about his view on destructive code in a 1997 interview, Spanska, the French lava master, replied: "I really do not like that…There are two principal reasons why I will never put a destructive code inside one my viruses. First, I respect other peoples' work…The second reason is that a destructive payload is too easy to code. Formatting a HD? Twenty lines of assembler, coded in one minute. Deleting a file? Five instructions. Written in one second. Easy things are not interesting for the coder. I prefer to spend weeks to code a beautiful VGA effect. I prefer create than destruct [sic]. It's so important for me that I put this phrase in my MarsLand virus: 'Coding a virus can be creative.'" [link in original] Sure, "Spanska", but you were still forcing your audience to view your work, not to mention stealing time and resources (however small) from them on top of that, in the form of having to make sure you didn't just trash their data and work. --CAV Link to Original

1. It's hard to believe it, but nine years ago today, I started this blog. My thanks to everyone who has followed or otherwise supported this blog over the years. 2. The desktop computer is not so much obsolete as it is a victim of its own success argues Ibrahim Diallo: When was the last time you needed to buy a new PC? Two years ago? Three years ago? The last PC I built was in 2009. I had to upgrade because I pushed the previous one I built to the limit and that was in 2004. A 2009 desktop is old in computer years, but not so much in processing power. It maybe [ sic] true that there are a zillion new processors out in the market and their benchmark show exponential improvement. But to me benchmarking is just a marketing gimmick. PC sales are plunging but they are the wrong indicator to determine the advancement of the technology. The reason we are not buying PCs anymore is because those we have are already pretty amazing. Even if you don't have time to read it all, click on the link and scroll down for an amusing picture satirizing the idea -- unavoidable in the echo chamber of tech journalism -- that Diallo is questioning. 3. Sure. CONCACAF, the soccer federation through which the United States must qualify for the World Cup is no Europe. It doesn't follow, however, that the qualification tournament wasn't worth following: And then, like some old Western movie, the American cavalry arrived at the last second and saved the day for Mexico. Edgar Castillo, who made three friendly appearances for Mexico before switching to the Stars and Stripes, dribbled inside and sent a pass out wide left for Brad Davis, whose one-time cross was met by the head of Graham Zusi and sent into the back of the net to equalize. Panamanian hearts sank. Mexico exploded. One Mexican announcer shouted in English, "We love you forever and ever, God bless America!" before ripping apart the Mexican team in Spanish. Kudos go to American coach Juergen Klinsmann for both getting business done with two games to spare and playing to win the last two games anyway. The coach used the games to prepare for the trip to Brazil and, at the same time, give a few less familiar players chances to prove themselves, 4. I like this post on computing happiness by Vivek Haldar. It is short and tightly-integrated, owing to the author's explicit tack of distilling his advice down to general principles: Corollary of the above: never use software that locks you into proprietary formats, or if you must, make sure to export your files out to a more portable format. The chance that you will be able to run the same hardware/software/version snowflake in a decade to decode your data is close to zero. This comports with both my own thinking and personal experience, good and bad. Amusingly enough, I found in the cmments something I want to check into, despite the fact that the author omitted it because he "didn't want to proselytize" (also something I appreciated). -- CAV Link to Original

Possible Light Posting Opportunity has come a-knocking -- not unexpectedly, but a little more quickly than I anticipated. I may need some time in the wee hours at the beginning of the week to get prepared. I won't rule out posting here, but I may not have the time until nearly the weekend. Weekend Reading "An ancient principle is to deny one's enemies resources so that they are forced to turn their attention away from fighting and to focus on basic tasks of survival." -- Wendy Milling, in "The Real Obamacare Fight Is Between Establishment Republicans and the Tea Party" at Forbes "Even if you're stuck with a dishonest co-worker or landlord, it doesn't follow that you have to become like them." -- Michael Hurd, in "Honesty Is Not Your Enemy" at The Delaware Coast Press "Avoiding conflict on principle can lead to a false and inauthentic relationship where false assumptions will build up on one or both sides." -- Michael Hurd, in "Is All Conflict Bad?" at The Delaware Wave My Two Cents Anyone who thinks the news media, always carrying water for the Democrats, had the upper hand in the budget showdown over ObamaCare should read the Milling piece. Word. I don't agree with everything in this blog posting about Microsoft Word, particularly the anti-capitalist slant, but it does a good job of outlining what is wrong with the common word processing program and why. A biggie for me is the fact that the file format is ever-changing and obscure, making it worthless as an archive: [P]lanned obsolescence is of no significance to most businesses, for the average life of a business document is less than 6 months. But some fields demand document retention. Law, medicine, and literature are all areas where the life expectancy of a file may be measured in decades, if not centuries. Microsoft's business practices are inimical to the interests of these users. I have avoided Microsoft Word as much as possible for well over a decade, but I have had similar problems with the file formats of competitors, although for different reasons. If something is really important, I save it as plain text, perhaps with markups. -- CAV Link to Original